The Gordon School, a 100-year-old independent school for nursery to eighth grade, wanted to build a new Field House, a new Library, and a new Middle School Classroom Wing on its East Providence campus. In addition, Gordon needed to renovate and expand portions of its 1960’s Lower School and Early Childhood buildings and to transform the old gymnasium into a new Performing Arts Facility.
The challenge for IKM was designing new buildings of diverse sizes and shapes that would fit comfortably among the much-loved original building forms. The architects emulated the scale, materials and motifs of the existing school, adding a few bold interventions: a playful curved wall at the Nursery addition, masonry buttresses and a roof-top light monitor at the new Field House, a gable-roofed mezzanine spanning the new Library from corner to corner, and a Middle School addition with an elevator that manages to link the existing five split-level floors.
